Fifty Years Ago: The Prelude To A Bush War You Never Heard Of

For Kid

Thanks for reminding me.

Dick Snider was a cop with a good heart. Well, that was back then. Today cops get more negative press than ever, and YouTube videos don’t always help much.

In Arkansas, fleeing from the State Police in a car can easily end up in your death. Usually it just ends with a wrecked stolen car and a Walmart shoplifter crawling out from under something that doesn’t even resemble a car, but used to, the driver bruised, cut or worse, but the severity of the crime and the condition of the driver make no difference; they could have a severed arm and they would still be cuffed.

If it appears by YouTube videos that no cop in the ASP has a heart, then it must be true.

Of course it isn’t, but it’s unfair how judgements can be made with so few facts. And perhaps I have seen unjustified shootings, and maybe a PIT maneuver was done wrong, resulting in the fleeing driver’s death plus collateral damage, even involving critical wounds to innocent civilians. That doesn’t make police officers evil. It makes them human. Only once did I learn of an officer being criminally charged in a pursuit, and I don’t know what happened to him.

Cops go through things no video can truly convey to a viewer the lifelong trauma that results. You see it, but you weren’t there. You felt only what any other observer did. That’s a happy circumstance for you and me, but the officer or trooper will, should they survive, recover from wounds, get cleared to return to duty, or leave the force, carry nightmares, both waking and not, until the day they die.

In 1975, there were things going on that some cops knew about, but were either indifferent to or helpless to stop.

Officially, there is no source for crime statistics, but what you hear or read about today is a very old human crisis.

Back then, people in Mexico heard stories of plenty in the land of “El Norte,” and poverty stimulates dreams into motivation. The United States had work. Places to live for those who worked hard. It had food, lots of it, and more. Some tried to legally immigrate and some, most perhaps, were turned away.

Thus we have illegal crossings, and what most Americans got to know about it was that the crossers were just criminals.

Aside from the attempt to cross the border illegally, there were very few criminals. But before they could get to the United States, they faced dangers far worse than deportation or prosecution.

The U.S. and Mexico border is about 2,000 miles of land and sea, and every mile of that border has a different danger to challenge even the most determined soul.

There are vast amounts of desert, some mountains, even sea and rivers to be reckoned with. From Sonora, it may seem like there are plenty of places to cross, but many chose the route across Baja into San Diego.

There were reasons for this. One was that the lands south of San Diego were too treacherous for the federales, bringing up the second reason, which was the aid of polleros, or coyotes, men who would “guide” border crossers to their destination, which invariably meant “Los,” or Los Angeles, via San Diego.

That’s where a San Diego Police Department lieutenant named Dick Snider comes in. He witnessed multiple crimes against women and children and was helpless to do anything to stop them. Sometimes lying on a hill, looking out over the canyons south of the city, he used binoculars and saw the guides beat, rob, and abandon those who paid them, usually with their last pennies.

For the record, a Mexican under a guide was called a pollo, which translates as a “chicken,” because various trucks were often used in border crossings. But the polleros weren’t always in trucks and some never really planned on doing what they were paid for.

Snider was morally offended by what he saw. He was outraged to the point where he couldn’t keep silent and asked for permission from his supervisors to take action. When he finally got it in 1976, a task force was created and he did the initial recruiting: all officers had to be of Latino descent. The members would be trained in military combat tactics and clothed in camouflage uniforms.

That was a good idea followed by a bad one.

The idea of the task force was sound. The choice of clothing failed.

As the members were training, Dick Snider was frustrated, but hopeful that the men chosen would make a difference.

The result was the “Border Area Robbery Force,” which came to be known only by its acronym, “BARF”, and from October 1976 to 1978, the squad learned some good and some awful things.

First, the canyon was dark. Getting one’s night vision was a process, and at first the bad guys were at an advantage. Working at night, they were able to see targets but on their approach, their camouflage chased the banditos away before BARF could engage them.

Lesson learned, they became exactly what they were up against. Their hair grew. They had unshaven faces. They bought clothes from secondhand shops like those worn by the pollos. They went out, sometimes without bathing, and successfully infiltrated the hapless pollos and made history.

But there had to be rules, and the sergeant, Manny Lopez, decided that among the innocent people and the bandits, there in the darkness, the frantic scramble to tell which was a bandit and which was a pollo was a dangerous time. A time that offered nothing but danger. He needed a way to communicate to his men who the targets were and when to act.

Lopez, who could terrify his own men when one of his eyebrows climbed his forehead and became a question mark, would say, ¿Sabes que? That was a signal to get ready, because something was about to go down. The eyebrow was a sign that his temper had maxed.

Nerves screwed tight, adrenaline flowing, they waited. The codeword to take action was ironic: “¡BARF!”

The bandits did not, at first, stand a chance. Unprepared for pollos who carried guns and actually fired them was terrifying. It was like seeing men turn into werewolves, it was that fantastic.

Arrests were made. Shootings, then full-blown firefights occurred. Three of the squad sustained gunshot wounds.

Eventually, as they squatted in the darkness, submissive, as pollos did, they were approached directly by the polleros who would try to rob them. There were initial negotiations concerning taking them to Los, but they knew it was a setup. Manny would say, “¿Sabes que?” And then “BARF!” and all hell would break loose.

It was inevitable then, that the robbers would change tactics. One night one of them was asked for a “pisto” or money, and the barfer replied by answering with a gesture, a name for a drink, which was incorrect; pisto is from south of Mexico. The bandit was asking for money, and now he was suspicious. The bandit wasn’t stupid.

Sometimes it depends on location as to the meaning of a Spanish word. For example, pollo can mean a cute person or a child, which in the latter case would change from pollo to polla depending on gender, the one ending in a being feminine. This is the same as La or El, as in la leche being feminine because it is milk, or El Gordo, The fat man.

The man who caught the mistake of the pisto was not stupid, and certainly not a genius. He just happened to know the difference.

One night, a terrible night, two Tijuana cops stood at the border fence, then came through. They were known to drag canyon crawlers back to their side of the fence, but on this night, they held Lopez in an armed standoff. One of the Mexican officers fired.

What happened next was an outrageous firefight between hundreds of Tijuana officers and any backup the BARF team called in.

It caused an international incident, but that went semi-resolved and BARF kept doing what it did.

But one cannot endure the darkness, rattlesnakes, loose rocks and gunfire without a dear price. Off duty, they drank. Hard. They didn’t go home. Lopez warned them that they had to go home.

Some had affairs. And later, when Joe Wambaugh, a bestselling author who had written books like The Blue Night, The Onion Field and The Choirboys began to interview the now-disbanded BARF members, he violated a rule that was inviolable amongst brother officers. He wrote about the affairs and drinking. When his book Lines and Shadows was published, it chronicled everything he knew. And it was a bestseller. It’s a genuinely great read and I recommend it, but the BARFers hated it and him. Carlos Chacon swore he never read the entire book, and said clearly in an interview that Wambaugh wasn’t out there, and if he had been, he would have been beaten to a pulp. Marriages broke up because of him.

Initially, the BARF members hated the book.

Wambaugh stated that when he interviewed the men, it was obvious that they were suffering from PTSD. They had faced shadows moving in the canyons, but had not faced the shadows that chased their souls in nightmares.

In time, most of the Border Area Robbery Force took pride in the book. It proved that they had made a difference when no one else could or would. In places east of that canyon, there were no agents or officers concerned about the plight of the pollos.

Today, they’re legends who Wambaugh called “the last of the gunslingers.”

One night…and I warn you, this is disturbing and was all too common, the squad stopped the rape of a minor who was with her family. Women were often sexually assaulted along with their children. Men who lived all their lives by the code of machismo were helpless before men with guns. They were shot or they saw their family hurt. Everyone got hurt. On this particular night, the male pollos did not help Rosetta, or her daughter, Esther. One ran. The others squatted in terror. That’s until a vicious fight broke out between Manny Lopez, a Border Patrol agent, and a la migra, or immigration officer. The mother and daughter were saved. Rosetta cried and kissed Manny’s hand, and thanked God for a miracle. She never stopped believing that a miracle had happened because just as she finished demanding that God has to save her daughter, Lopez appeared.

One of the would-be rapists was arrested; the rest made it back to Tijuana.

Their adventures would get worse, much worse. They maintained that whatever they went through, it was worth it. In 1978, police chief Kolender decided that it was dangerous and that the banditos had become hip to the BARF squad’s tactics. There was a definite decline in crime, but what’s more is, the robbers were out there in the dark now, waiting for them. It was over for BARF.

Of course, the pollos kept coming, and as soon as everyone guessed that they were gone, crime went sharply up.

But for a moment, just a small amount of time, they had heroes who saved them. All because one man, a lieutenant who was a gringo, wore his heart on his sleeve and sold the conviction that the pollos were human beings who deserved protection. Dignity. Human rights. People who Destiny had no right to kill.

The men were brave, there’s no doubt about it. They also cared about the people being robbed and violated just as much as Dick Snider cared.

And so they made a difference. Crime statistics shrank. Bandits stopped crossing the border and simply committed their crimes in Tijuana. Manny Lopez was so infuriated that at least once, he ordered his squad to go through the fence.

In the canyon, the firefights grew more intense. By 1978, the chief knew that it was too dangerous to send men back out there, and shut BARF down.

Aftermath

Crime in the canyons soon returned with a vengeance. No one that I can find ever tried such an action again, and right now, pollos face murder, sexual assault, human trafficking and forced labor when cartels intercept them, and inhumane conditions in camps once they do cross but are caught by ICE.

Here, hatred is and always has been heaped on them, an unbearable weight, an unfair price to pay for simply wanting a better life.

The Border Area Robbery Force made 300 arrests, were involved in 10 shootings and six major firefights and three officers were wounded by gunfire. Yet we will never know how many lives were saved. If the number stood at only one, they would still have done it. The sacrifice was great but the cause was greater. That’s what cops stand for: the greater good.

The pollos had a plan. They wore two sets of clothing: one for the journey and one underneath for job interviews.

Would you be courageous enough to do that?

The BARF team were bitter, mostly about Manny Lopez getting all the press and interviews while nobody else knew their names. They all parted in less than amicable ways, haunted, yet still proud of everything they had accomplished and endured.

“¿Sabes que?”

“BARF!”

Remember: hate should have no place here. If you remember, act like you know you should with mercy, love, friendship and all of the kindness and respect others deserve.

Current status, immigrants and border:

ICE continues with illegal seizures and deportations. Crime in the canyons still happens.

Leaving Cop Hate Behind

Growing up, all I knew about police officers was from TV shows like Dragnet, Adam-12, and a few others I can’t remember at the moment. Heroes in blue, larger than life.

Then came my sad exposure to the evening news and the riots and protests. The Kent State University incident. That one was probably National Guard.

I never lost my awe of cops. But back then, you rarely heard of police being shot. I know it happened, but it was far less common than today. In the tumult of the mid-60s to the mid-70s, so much happened that I can’t seem to remember everything and what the timeline is.

Everyone I grew up with had, at one time or another, wanted to join the police department. We were naive enough for that. I don’t know of any who actually did it.

The hippie and biker cultures were cop haters. Depending on who I was around and being susceptible to suggestion because I’d been so thoroughly brainwashed by my father, I’d often go with the mentality of the crowd. I was really fucked-up. And I have often been swayed since my teen years because I react emotionally, and I get influenced by the reactions of other’s emotions.

But aside from delinquent pranks at junior high school, I kept straight for the most part.

That’s not to say I was above the odd misdemeanor or two. Having some fun, like teens do, was what made my life bearable. In the summer of 1976, I had a badge holder from a shop in Annapolis with a “special officer” badge in it. Later, a classmate gave me, out of the blue, a real Anne Arundel County police badge. I was insane to accept it.

During summer break, I worked at my father’s warehouse on Penrod Court in Glen Burnie. Two guys older than I, Ronny Booth and Mike Lukum, wore long hair and jeans to work. Flared-leg jeans. Yeah, I’m not kidding. I wouldn’t be old enough to drive until late that fall after Driver’s Education classes. So, at lunch, I’d go with them to McDonald’s or Burger King. But one day, I came up with an idea. In addition to the badge, I had a pair of handcuffs. With black hair, wearing a red bandana folded and tied into a classic headband and a pair of mirrored Foster Grants, I looked perfect. I gave the guys the badge and cuffs. I took a baggie and poured soap powder in it and tied it off. I stuck it in my back pocket, and the plan was to enter Harundale Mall on opposite sides, and they, as undercover narcs, would head right for me and “bust” me. There was another guy with us, George, closer to my age. He would be the witness, and in the event of a shopper asking what was going on, he’d say something to make them swallow the sham.

They got me up against the glass at some store, I think it was Lerner Shops or something like that. They were good, too. They had my face against the glass and “searched” me, coming up with the bag of powder. Ronny held it up and said, “Twenty years,” while Mike cuffed me. A crowd, much larger than I’d ever anticipated, gathered. Sure enough, some white shirt-and-tie dude asked, “What’s going on?” and George said, “It’s a bust!“

It was perfect. But had we pushed our luck? What if a real cop saw us? To this day, that idea scares the shit out of me.

The Narc Boys would ride one more time at the Glen Burnie Mall. It was somehow less satisfying than terrifying, but we got away with it. After that, my badge and handcuffs vanished. I have no idea who kept them. This was back in the days when cops were called names like “the fuzz” and “pig” and at the Harundale bust as I was led out in cuffs, I screamed, “Fuckin pigs!” Scared the hell out of some old ladies. I feel bad about that.

The badge was probably a felony to have, but I never had the chance to turn it in. The fun was over. None of us wanted to pull that shit again.

We amused ourselves by eating at McDonald’s and going next door afterward for snowballs because the two girls who ran it were hot. One always wore a halter that showed middle and side cleavage. A blonde and a brunette. Eye candy for us chauvinist lowlifes back then. After that summer, Wendy’s was built on the lot the girls had their stand on. All I could do was remember and daydream.

Decades passed, and I stacked up traffic tickets and finally let my license expire. After hundreds in fines and 35 accidents, I’d had enough. I was blessed not to have killed anyone. My driving career lasted from 1976 to 2003. Severe PTSD or CPTSD and driving don’t mix.

On social media, being as I was a liberal, I ran into cop haters. Unfortunately, they had the power to manipulate my feelings and, therefore, my opinions. I’ve written things on this site that I regret. Anti-cop bullshit and worse.

I was wrong. One incident does not define every officer or the departments they work for.

George Floyd’s death was tragic. But he had attacked someone. And one officer broke. Now, there’s a statue of Floyd. The former officer has a prison bounty on him. He’s been shanked multiple times, and he will be murdered in there. I don’t think that’s justice. It’s no less than a hate crime. What will it accomplish? Things will get worse.

I understand the desire to take revenge. Oh, yes. But it’s never right.

Someone I followed on Facebook would take the worst articles and post them. She infected me with her invective toward cops. Nobody will ever do that to me again. Left-wing hate is no way to answer right-wing hate. Where’s it end? It doesn’t. We need to at least agree on that. But social media won’t allow that. Respect the men and women of our police. Our medics. Firefighters. They are never safe out there, but they’ll die trying to make sure that we are. They are heroes.

And finally, tonight, I have something to say about New Year’s Eve and day. It’s become a necessary thing to have police set sobriety checkpoints. Has been for decades. I want to tell you, one friend to another, if you’re going to drink alcohol this year, then please have a designated driver or the cash to call an Uber. I’ve been watching police bodycam footage on YouTube, and I’m shocked at how many drivers are caught at two or three times the legal limit. They’re everyone, a cross sampling of us all.

How would you really feel if you woke up in the drunk tank, you didn’t remember getting there, and a sergeant tells you that you killed three people including the love of your life in an accident?

Things that change your life forever and put you in prison for vehicular manslaughter? And lives are ended. Yours is ruined. Don’t drink and drive. Obey the instructions of officers at checkpoint blocks. You can do it easy or hard.

It’s up to you.

COPS

The following contains dramatized and controversial material. Some may find it disturbing.

2012

It’s getting further into the Christmas season in New England. You’ll never know what you were doing when the radio crackled a heart-stopping call.

Shots fired. “All units, the individual I have on the line says she’s continuing to hear shots fired.” You roll. It’s the goddamn elementary school! Someone inside is shooting a firearm! This isn’t your worst nightmare come true. No. This is a nightmare you never imagined in the first place. Anyway it doesn’t matter. It’s happening.

There’s an officer on scene, just arrived behind the school. The building is in sight. You arrive 13 seconds after the first unit. Now the troopers are coming too. In all the northeast, there are none so feared as Connecticut state troopers. If you’ve done something wrong, they’re gonna know.

Then the next call comes. The shots have ceased. In minutes, you and other officers evacuate the students, almost none of which could possibly not be in shock. You go easy, but urge them on. Outside, goddamn reporters are already filming, the fucking vultures. The school is searched. Three times. You finally see the shooter. He’s just a kid. You saw the weapons brought out. Fucking AR-15. A handgun. What the fuck?

You may go home later, but when you do, you will be different. You’ve heard about cops who had faced the most terrible of things. They all share a few things. Like PTSD. Heart disease as they feed the depression or drink the pain away. Suicides. Early death.

You saw the bodies. Twenty wee children. Six adults. You saw them. Smelled the powder still in the hallway. No. Though you have a job to do, you turn away from everyone else while your eyes fill with tears. You know you’ll see those poor kids for the rest of your days. You wonder how you’ll ever endure it. You wipe your eyes, take a deep breath and get back to work. Then you remember the bathroom. What you saw there is going to haunt everyone who saw it for the rest of their lives. And no civilians except for the parents will ever know. You know their lives are all but destroyed. You know it. But you can’t think about it now. That is for later…

2016

You serve the people in the city of Orlando, Florida. And during the winter tourist season, you can be pretty busy, but the summer is a whole different matter. There are high crime areas. There are drunks at parties. There are traffic accidents and moving violations everywhere. You think some days are the worst you’ve ever had. That every day on the beat after this day is bound to be gravy; nothing could be as bad as the watch you just pulled.

And then you get a call you’re never, ever going to get over. You hear the dispatcher, but you can’t feel anything but adrenaline. SWAT is on its way, but you’re called, too. For all you know, so was the fucking entire force. There’s a shooting going on, a bad one. You hit the light bar and the siren, and maybe, as you drive, you get this feeling. Like, fear mixing all too slowly, as if time slowed down, like in the movies. It’s a terrible feeling. It’s nothing compared to what you’re about to see, and hear, and feel.

Twenty four hours later, you’ve returned. The bodies are still there, still being processed by the crime scene people. Fifty bodies. All victims of the same lone shooter armed with an assault rifle. The cell phones still ring. On the bodies. Some are quiet, some probably have dead batteries. They were ringing constantly last night. But the ones that rang intermittently are ringing again, now, and you think you’ve never heard a worse sound in your life. Some of the fallen have not been identified. You know that you will never have another traffic violation, drunk and disorderly, or any other call that will make you think you have it bad. Because this…

This…

This will always be with you. The victims’ faces are different. By now, their eyes have clouded completely over. The stench is powerful, a familiar odor but one that you’ve never dealt with on a level like this.

Some will have closed-casket viewings and funerals. Some things, even a skilled mortician can’t fix. And it’s so senseless. This was a celebration. It was innocent, there was dancing, music, drinks, fun… These people never knew that when they walked into this room, they would not be leaving it alive. That they weren’t going home that night.

There were other victims. Last night you helped get them out. It was madness. In all, 102 people were shot. Forty nine dead, fifty three wounded, and some of the critically wounded will die. Because being wounded by a bullet isn’t like stories or Hollywood crap. You can linger for months, and then just die.

Someone in the locker room told you that it was the worst mass shooting in the country’s history. To you, it seems an odd thing to say. Because now, the outrage is sinking in. The shooter had an Sig Sauer MCX assault rifle. And a handgun,. Glock 17, which will prove to be the backup weapon of choice common to lots of mass shooters. He left his brass everywhere. Like a war zone. He’d emptied one magazine with the rifle and loaded another. Not because he hated LGBTs. Because he wanted to avenge the deaths of Islamic people at the hands of military forces in the United States piloting drones, among other reasons.

Reports by cable and network news are already saying it was a targeted hate crime against LGBTs. Later, you’ll learn that Omar Mateen was Googling “Orlando night clubs” earlier last night. An investigation will reveal all were protected by armed guards. It’s likely that the man found that out, ending up at the Pulse not because it was a gay nightclub but because he found it agreeably defenseless. None of it will ever matter to you. It’s death, mass death. It’s a horror. It shouldn’t happen. Not here, not anywhere.

You listen to the ringtones. And you wonder… and after a few seconds, you know… there will be another, a worse, a bigger body count, somewhere, probably not too far in the future. As you think about it, you begin to ask yourself one question… and it will go unanswered, because it’s a shitty, unfair world and you know it. The question comes to you without words as you look around at bodies on the floor and the place where last night music played and drinks were served and it was pleasant in here, but now it’s silent except for police radios and the dying cell phones ringing, soon to never ring again. You’ve seen some shit in your time. Stuff you thought was bad. Stuff you knew was bad. And you’ve lived with the nightmares ever since. But as you look for your supervisor, wondering just what the fuck you’re doing here, that question comes back to you and this time it has words: how the fuck do I live with this?

2017

You didn’t see this coming. Typical for early October, the temperature that day had reached about 90, but after sunset it slowly began to drop. Cruising with your window open, you thought it was still in the upper 70s but it felt pleasant under a clear sky. A decent Sunday night. You hoped it would be quiet in the last hour of your tour of duty. Nothing much had happened on this early fall night. You know about the festival going on at the grounds beside McCarran, but it’s Sunday, and people have to be at work and school in the morning. It’s almost over and you just hope for nothing but a peaceful exit from the grounds when it ended.

On the radio, dispatch is talking to another officer about someone’s history. Something about a person having a hernia surgery. Then there’s a response about a silver vehicle and a silver jeep. Generic chatter, stuff you as a veteran can tune out but still register. It’s not your call, and nobody’s going to need backup.

The chatter is as subdued and unintelligible as every other law enforcement channel in the whole fucking United States. Yet like every cop, you can understand it even though no one else can. You relax and yawn, because the night is almost over. It’s actually called Paradise, the area you’re cruising your beat in. You may think all the jokes in the locker room are funny as shit, but in exactly fifteen seconds, nothing about it will ever be funny again.

“We’ve got shots fired! Shots fired, sounds like automatic fire!” It’s rare for a brother or sister officer to sound like that: the guy is frantic. You can’t even tell who it is.

Some garbled sounds from the radio. But you’re not yawning anymore. You’re upright like a statue of a Greek god on a throne in your seat, hairs on your arms raised. You’ve heard shouting on the radio before, but no matter what hairy shit was going down, you have never heard another cop sound like that.

You haven’t been dispatched. You don’t know who that was or where he is. You have a few seconds of merciless uselessness that you can’t tolerate. No cop enjoys that feeling.

“He’s at Mandalay Bay, he’s about halfway up! I see the shots! He’s at Mandalay Bay! About halfway up!”

And you ain’t far away. Now you know where to go. But you don’t really, because like a lot of Vegas hotels, Mandalay Bay had a fucking weirdo for a chief architect. What side is this sniper on?

Wait, what the fuck? A sniper with an automatic weapon that high? This can’t be happening! But your training and experience kick in. You don’t need a dispatch call for this. You just need to hear where the shooter is and where he’s shooting.

“Control, that is correct. Active shooter, many people down stage left.”

Another officer: “Do we have anyone covering the southwest corner between Mandalay Bay and the venue?”

Another: “Can anyone in the CP tell me where it’s coming from?”

Response (female, officer or dispatcher unknown): “It’s coming from Mandalay Bay!”

Then: “719, I’m gonna form a strike force, I need five officers on me.”

You know what to do now. A strike team is going in after the shooter. For the “many people down at the venue,” you have to go. Good God, how many people are at that concert?

The shooter is loosing hundred-round bursts. They’re right over your head as you go into the fenced open-air venue. You get into a bent position and press on. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. Bodies lying on the ground everywhere. Some have to be dead. You hope not all. One woman is in tears, she and her friends trying to get out and you look around carefully. “You’re good from where you are. If you can’t see Mandalay Bay, he can’t see you.”

Then calls about other shooters come in. And it could be true. The sounds of the shots are so close together. The rounds are hitting a larger area now. Adrenaline alone is keeping you from collapsing. You begin to check bodies. One woman who’s hit in the leg is bleeding. You need to get a tourniquet on it. If she’s left here, she’ll die. You get another officer to help get her to your cruiser. Paramedic units can’t enter an active shooting scene. Your trip to the hospital is fast. Doctors and triage nurses are waiting outside. The wounded started coming in a few minutes ago. They get the young woman out of your vehicle. “That’s been on for fifteen minutes, that tourniquet,” you say.

You have to go back. The shooting has stopped. A radio call reports a strike team forced the door to one of the shooter’s two suites open. Their horror is clear. The man had shot himself. Around him lay an arsenal. A fucking arsenal of AR-15 rifles, one AR-10, and more. Hundred-round magazines were everywhere, and some 50-round mags as well. The whole thing lasted ten goddamn minutes, and when you get back to the Harvest festival grounds, the lights have been off since the shooter was still firing when someone killed the power. Even with flashlight in hand, you are stunned by the carnage. The dead are everywhere. The wounded moan and scream but dare not move because they’re in shock and still terrified that to do so will get them shot again. Even if unable to silence their pain, they’re playing dead.

You’re not going end-of-watch. This will be the longest night of your life. And not one detail can ever be forgotten. You’ll have nightmares for the rest of your life. Your wife won’t understand. Same as husbands won’t. They’re going to beg their boyfriends, girlfriends and fiancees to quit. They sat in front of the TV and were scared shitless that their loved ones were dead.

During the massacre, bedlam: one officer shouted, “We can’t worry about the victims! We have to get the sniper before we have more victims!”

“Be advised I can hear automatic fire from one floor above us.”

“I’m at the end of the 32nd floor. We have a security guard shot in the hallway. He’s down!”

“He’s shooting at the medical tent! We have one vic shot in the head!”

At the end. The casualties were staggering. 59 people were dead. 869 wounded. One Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officer is among them. For whatever reason, Stephen Paddock had become the most lethal shooter in domestic criminal history. And you will never be that same cop you were at 22:00 local time on 1 October 2017, and there’s nothing that will ever change that. Still, you ask yourself: how am I going to live with this?

Four days later, a candlelight service is held in honor of Charleston Heartfield. He’s the brother officer slain by a fucking madman. Among members of the department, that night brings a respite from the shock. For a moment, the emotional reaction can bleed through. Some cry. One is hugged by another officer. The crowd genuinely grieves for the fallen hero, hurt for his son and widow. Las Vegas cries. You cry with them. And you don’t know how you can go on.

2018

You’re having the nightmares you feared. This country is sick and getting worse every day. But in a little over four months, something will happen 2, 500 miles away that will shock you, sicken and make you seethe with anger. Unlike other historic events, you’re not going to remember where you were when the news broke. But the evil and vile details, you won’t forget. And they’re going to change you again. And the Mandalay Bay shooting won’t make any more sense because of it, but finally you will have that answer your wife asks for still: why do you insist on keeping “The Job”?

Because on Valentine’s Day, at just after 14:00 local time, a former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida walked in with a Smith & Wesson Ar-15 style semiautomatic assault rifle and proceeded to shoot students and staff on three floors in ice-cold blood. It would eclipse the Columbine Massacre and Sandy Hook and take its place as the worst school shooting, and you watch in disbelief as you learn a deputy on duty at the school remained outside even as he heard shots fired. There’s no greater dishonor than to stand by as an officer of the law and allow kids to be killed. One school staff member hid in a closet. It’s not just deputies that failed the kids, you’ll tell your wife. But teachers have died protecting kids, like at Sandy Hook. These staff members were garbage as far as you’re concerned. You’d like to have a minute alone with that chickenshit deputy.

You point to the TV. “That,” you tell your wife, “is why we do it. We’re supposed to mean something. Stand for something, help people. We know what the risks are, but unlike that pissy deputy, we go in.”

And cops do go in. They save lives. They die doing it. To most police officers, that shield means something. Something bigger than civilians know.

In Dallas, they ran toward the shots.

In Manhattan on 11 September, 2001, they surged into the twin towers. They had no time to think they may not come back out. Even if they did, they went in anyway. Most didn’t come back out and some were never found.

We mourned those intrepid souls, our fallen heroes. Not just New York. The whole country. We cried for them all, the first responders who died that awful, ugly, horrible day. Firefighters. Police. Paramedics. Everyone who was visiting. Everyone who worked there.

Before the towers fell, anyone a block away heard a sound that made some of them throw up. Others would scream. People above the burning impact areas where the planes had gone in were seen with their heads outside broken windows. Smoke, thick and black, belched from those windows. They still could not breathe.

The cameras on the ground recorded what made people scream and vomit. Bodies of the jumpers hitting the pavement from such heights made a sound Hollywood couldn’t reproduce on a multi billion dollar budget. There would be no forgetting it. If you were unfortunate enough to see those bodies land? That trauma was only a part of that unbearable day, and yet it’s one that affected people around the world.

Like so many disasters before, the police were mourned as heroes. Survivors got hugged. But now… that’s all over.

There are shouts of threats. Name calling. Curses. Cries to defund police departments. A blanket condemnation of every cop in America, a thing no different than bigotry against all blacks, whites, Latinos and American Indians. And it has sobered me and I’m not one of those cursing cops.

What happened to George Floyd was heinous. There’s no argument there, and anyone who tries is purely wicked to the core. But although I want justice for the man, I don’t like what’s been going on since he died. I liked Al Sharpton’s eulogy. I wept. But then it was exploited by cable news shamelessly while other major news had never gone away. Reporters were in positions where they knew goddamn well they should not be. The coverage sickened me. I honestly got sick.

When corporate owned news bashes the police and puts cameras in crowds waiting for cops to do the slightest thing so they can show the video a million times, something is fucked up.

I will never call for the police to be defunded. They get extra training. They carry extra equipment. They are often first on the scene, before medics and firemen. They have to negotiate intense situations medics can’t even get near, and they do it, every day. They don’t hesitate. You’ve heard that 99% of cops are good. It’s more than that. You’re going to have to use decimals and no fair counting an honest mistake as the actions of a bad cop. You’ve done it as have I. We’re like that, harsh, reactionary, judgemental creatures. Well, I wish we weren’t. I will never hate cops nor lump them all together as bad. They’re not. They’re human. They have feelings and carry scars. They have families to take care of along with taking care of you and me. And you throw shit at them. Try to provoke them so you can use your cellphone camera.

Shame on you all. Then you’ll need a cop. You’ll call 911 one day. If they’re not there in ten seconds, you’ll complain. Try to hire a lawyer. Post negative shit on Twitter and Facebook. Because I know you. And that’s just how you are.